


The Definition of Claire

by orange_8_hands



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Things, Character Study, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 15:48:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five firsts of Claire Novak</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Definition of Claire

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my LJ](http://orange-8-hands.livejournal.com/1349.html), Oct 2011.

i.

"Watch where you're going, bitch," someone says, and Claire let's the blankness pass over her. 

She comes to sitting across from the principal. Her mom is tight lipped and explaining, offering excuses, justifications, promises. Punishment, detention, try not for expulsion, _it’s a zero policy school Mrs. Novak_ and _her father just left_. _Be that as it may_ , the principal answers back, and Amelia's hands tighten on the steering wheel. She was not a shouter when her silence was such an effective tool, but Claire felt cotton wrapped around her mind and silence was nothing to hear past the echo of her father's voice.

 _If I'm not your daughter, whose am I?_

She stands in front of the bathroom mirror, twelve years old. She pokes her mouth, watches red dribble down. The pain is a sharp sting, every time she presses down.

 _We're all God's children, Claire_ , and Jimmy's voice is still a million memories of home.

ii.

The doctor has tired eyes and steady hands and a brisk voice. "Do you know where you are?" he asks, and Claire cranes her head away from the light he shines in her eyes. "Do you know who you are?" he asks, but Claire can't remember which driver's license is in her pocket.

"Stay with us," he says, and she's just enough of her mother's daughter to listen.

iii.

He pauses after he gets her shirt off.

“Bad ass,” he says, running his fingers over the ink, instead of her breasts. _That one’s against being an angel’s vessel_ , she could tell him. _That one’s a good luck charm against witch magic. That one’s to keep me hidden from supernatural eyes._

He peels off her jeans to see the ones lining up and down her thighs, the sex almost forgotten. “Who knew,” he keeps saying.

“Shame you keep them all covered up.  It’s hot,” he adds, tapping the small, black wings over her heart.

 _That’s a sick memorial to my father_ , she could say, but pulls his pants off instead.

iv.

Her mother always smelled like the small glass bottle she kept at the end of her dresser. The stopper was blue, the bottle bluer, with the smallest inscriptions at the bottom and the tiniest crack at the tip. It sat next to a bowl of special pins Amelia had gotten from her grandmother and a plastic bottle of lotion she got at the supermarket.

Claire stands alone at the edge of a forest and smells her mother burn.

Last Novak standing. 

v.

 _Claire Novak, I will save your father. Give your consent and I will save him._

 _Yes_ , she says, and Castiel fills her with light.


End file.
